joined after seeing this awesome site i'm moots with participate in these really cool prompts. go check them out! muse ariadne is by xalli .
"retell a story/moment/memory from your own life in a way you don't usually look at it"
You are sixteen. The wind is easing outside. Alone in your room, your mind is whirling. You're on the phone with your then sweetheart. Your hands are stinging. He begs you to set down the blade. In your grip are two bars of soap shaped neatly into roses. White shavings cover the floor. The cuts in your skin are bleeding onto the blooms, burning, a reminder that you're alive. You don't recall how you got here. Why you started whittling. You think you were afeared of something. You think you weren’t feeling real again, and you reached for craft to ground you. You feel ill. He’s acting as though you had hurt yourself, but you didn’t, not this time. You dodged what could’ve been a misfall in red. Your fingers sting. There’s soap everywhere. You feel like a hound that gnawed through paperwork. And yet, this was a win. A small win against a very real fiend. You watch your blood branch out into one of the soap bars, blood that came from drive, not from despair. Despite blacking out, you fought a fiend much bigger than you, a fiend that thirsts for your blood always.
"reflect on and write about a moment that was monumental for someone else and how it affected you. maybe make some comparisons between your experiences, or mesh them."
My mother was sent to Europe when she was 17.
She got stuck with an abusive uncle, who'd parade her youth in exchange for conversation. Men's clubs. She'd sit like a doll. No touching.
Eventually, she found a roommate, and thus she was free. Her parents asked her to come back for the holidays.
At the airport, she found thousands of euros in a suitcase. My mom does what is right, always. She told him.
He kept the money for himself.
My mother didn't want to return to Lebanon, but she couldn't say no to her parents. She was the eldest, she was never taught how to say no.
Her parents took her passport.
Two years of college in France went down the drain: these wouldn't be recognised as valid in Lebanon.
She started all over again.
Her entire plight in France was for nothing. That money he took from her would've saved her - she could've stayed in France forever.
That bastard's in New York now. He has a YouTube channel. The wicked really does die last.
I think that when she was pregnant, her younger self was with me in the womb. I could hear it say:
"It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!"
I've been handicapped by this sense that things need to be fair at all times. Injustices done to loved ones send me reeling. I can't enjoy any media without checking that the underdog wins, that misunderstandings get resolved.
My mother's time in France and its untimely end were so monumental, they were encoded in my DNA.
In another world, my mother would've stayed in France. In another world, we could've been classmates.
I'll save for a trip to New York.
"write about something monstrous. what does it mean for something to be a monster? is it a judgment of character, something inherited at birth/creation, or something else?"
Before anything else, a monster is a warning.
Propped up in front of a crowd, the townspeaker will hold your portrait high and declare "Behold! This is the enemy!"
You will be hunted down: after all, you are a beacon of all that is wrong, a reminder that this world is a fallen one.
Your killers will say that we all have the potential for evil, and your head is needed on a mantle to keep their flock in check.
In your TV shows, the good guys will point at the bad guys screaming, "You monster!" The bad guys will rarely protest. They deserve it.
On the news, they'll call the enemy monsters too. There are no monsters on their side, though, never. I think they deserve it, too.
Sitting in church, you'll look at the golden monstrance. A monstrance, before anything else, is proof.
A monstrance is proof that the church is true. That the sermon is good. That God is great.
To you, a monstrance is a warning. Wasn't Jesus killed for going against his people? For claiming to be something greater?
To your young impressionable brain, a monstrance is a warning that your body will be eaten by your peers for millennia if you do what's right:
That they'll kill you, then in their grief, they'll rip you apart and consume you.
They'll write hymns about you! The same voices that condemned you will sing your odyssey.
Your butchers will bathe in your blood for good luck before their wedding.
Your bully will wear your hair in a locket for safe travels.
Your rapist will sing to people about how bittersweet your encounter was. A tale where he fell for the monster, but he forgave it.
He has a picture of you in his wallet that he looks at longingly. You were an experience. You monster.
There is nothing you can do about it. You are a child sitting in church.
"think & write about a space you've never inhabited-- something you've watched from afarr (in awe, fear, envy, etc), but never engaged in"
There is an appartment building in Milan with benches and a garden.
College students live there. Laundry machines rumble through the night, and in the morning, they hang out by the fountain, journals in hand.
They have words and coffee for breakfast. They show off their outfits, this new ring he thrifted, this scarf she made out of curtains.
Someone mentions crypto, someone else talks about a zine they're working on. Someone waves their ADHD medicine in the air - finally diagnosed! I'm so happy for you.
They go to class, then some stay out, the quieter ones come back. They read a book under a tree. They make coffee. They pawn off a cigarette from another student, half asleep on the bench.
She discusses her struggles with her identity, he nods thoughtfully with his experience with finding purpose. After their talk, they don't have to say goodbye: they live on the same floor. They'll talk in a couple of hours.
I'm not there. I'm on the other side of town - but we all go to the same college.
We talk about our plans. I say I'm building my own PC. They say they're impressed.
I'll try to walk with them as far as I can before going home. I'll watch as they turn to dots.
I don't think it's loneliness. I used to romanticise Kowloon a lot: a yearning for being part of something greater, of exchanging ideas and building a better community for the future. Of group projects... of a village. Of knowing my neighbours.
I'd like to be friends with my neighbours.
"find a news article, new or old, and write something based on it"
To find a news article to write about, when living in a warzone, is a little funny. I can see the news articles write themselves by looking outside my window. A rocket hit as I was typing! But I'm tired of the war. So I will speak of somethinh else:
Buried beneath a mountain of rubble, they counted the days by the breeze of their breath against the slippery walls. Eighteen days. Eighteen days of soppy lungs, aching bones, and the whispers of rain just beyond the stalagtites. Eighteen days where the darkness had become a companion, the rising water a suffocating friend.
Heavy rain had flooded Tham Luang Nang Non, leaving all twelve of them and their coach trapped. But they clung to life. They'd ration their breaths if they had to. Even in the belly of death, they refused to let go.
When the world finally found them, it found them strong. None of them faltered. They would all see the light of day again.
Someone had died trying to swim towards them days prior. But they wouldn't know it yet. A year later, the cave would claim another victim from injuries contracted during their rescue mission. But they all made it out.
In 2023, years later, their team captain took his own life.
But in the cave, life triumphed. They defeated death. They defeated darkness. The hope of twelve boys and a monk made coach was stronger than the monsoon season of Thailand.
I think about this case often. That they had to be rendered unconscious to be extracted from the cave. It reminds me of my own fears of anesthesia, of being put under before surgery only to never wake up. But they all woke up! They took the plunge to take a dive without knowing if they'd emerge on the other side. Twelve boys!
In Summer's streaks of green, a duck flails erratically:
A snake coils itself around it. It melts over its victim's feathers, it soaks it in the cruelest of storms.
A cat dries on the sidewalk, void of life, under the fires of Summer's laughter.